Well, I must say at first that I'm not surprised. It was pretty clear that there wasn't much of a technical limitation to using AA at the same time as HDR in Oblivion; it seemed pretty clear in the Beyond3D interview, (second page) when they merely mentioned that "Blending in the pixel shader would end up being prohibitively expensive given the complexity of our scenes," Rather than "Blending in the pixel shader would be completely impossible given the pixel shaders used for HDR."

The only real shame for most of us is that we don't have Radeon X1k cards, and use our old "X"-series cards. (like my X800XT and your Mobility X700)

Yeah it'd be nice to have it add some other features (like maybe integer H/DR) for those of us on slightly older gear, but I may drop by a friend's place and see how his X1600Pro handles the two together. I would n't be surprised if for him is is 'prohibitively expensive', but still nice to have the option none the less. Now if they'd only get on with the Mobile X1700 and Meroms. 8)

I have to say though I am surprised it was 'official' ATi who did it and not a tweak by one of their developer guys like Humus, but I guess it's really Chuck's patch made 'official'.

It would've been nice having it before a bunch of the reviews were made (many will remain unchanged forever), but perhaps Brandon at FS will consider this patch when re-benching (already made him doo so much! :twisted: )

You assume there's a readme. All of this is unsupported, and all my efforts to find an answer are turning up nothing. Still working on it. If I find an answer will post.. but if somenoe knows, it'll save me hours of searching and trialanderror.

Oh.. so i've been running with AA and HDR since I installed the update? (I have force set already). Damn. Well, if it makes you feel any better, it doesn't do much. If you're running at 1280x1024 or higher with HDR enabled, you really wont notice... and that's with all the settings maxed.. and yes, i'm running a capable system. :-p 1900xt, 4000+, bucket-o-RAm, etc.

Just finished Oblivion though.. all the main quest lines.. defeinitely worth every penny.

oh, and it's not technically supported by ATI. They're hosting it, but they've got disclaimers posted all over the place saying it's not their problem... :-p Not to be a nitpick. I hate it when people are nitpicks on a forum. :-p

It's kind of of topic, but there's actually a funny story attached to the release of the driver. It seems ATI's press announcement was filtered by HEXUS's spam filter due to it's "dirty" innuendos. For interest, there's also a brief bit of speculation about how HDR+AA is implemented.

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Geek bit: I'm fairly sure it's nothing much more than a change of backbuffer surface format so that MSAA resolve works and then scanout from that as normal. So the driver just allocates the 'right' surface format at runtime when the app requests the non MSAA-able format, and uses that for rendering.

Malph: It sounds like you've got a corrupt driver install. Disable your card in Device manager, reinstall the latest drivers, install the chuck patch, reboot, enable the card again, and it'll detect. Then play with your settings. Make sure Catalyst Ai is on, or else it won't work.. at least, that's what i read. I personally didn't have that problem...

no worries people ATI have released their april drivers which include a fix for HDR+AA.

It does? Tom's News says that 6.4 does not include the "Chuck" patch.

Also, just for the record, you can just install the Chuck patch and everything will work fine. I installed it as my drivers (never installed Cat 6.3) after reformating and everything works great (not that my x1600 pro does HDR with AA very well, but I wanted to see if it would work...)

It really annoys me when people just jump onto a forum and make stupid statements like this. Obviously it works for some people, but not for others. I am on several other forums where other users are also having no joy with the patch, I would guess about 20 people. I have seen about 50 people say it does work, so it is not universal and is clearly affected by some variables on peoples PC's. The fact that it works on your PC does not mean that you can make a sweeping statement that other readers should ignore the comments of people who say they are having a problem.

Next time you want to be "helpful" you should qualify your statement properly.

Ok, just cleaned out CAT6.3, also used catuninstaller to make sure, put CAT6.4 in, and no difference at all. According to the readme they have fixed the crossfire issue, they make no mention of the HDR+AA issue.

I have tried every way to set it and it won't work. Turned HDR off in Oblivion, and turned AA off in CCC. Then went into Oblivion and switched on HDR. Then left Oblivion and switched on AA (4x), went back into Oblivion and no AA. Tried with and without AI.

For all the work you're doing why bother waiting a month, just post a question in Rage3D's forum's catalyst section, lotsa beta testers there that likely can help you. Better than going around blindly or geting all worked up.

I have tried every way to set it and it won't work. Turned HDR off in Oblivion, and turned AA off in CCC. Then went into Oblivion and switched on HDR. Then left Oblivion and switched on AA (4x), went back into Oblivion and no AA. Tried with and without AI.

Bugger.

Looks like I wil have to wait for CAT6.5!!

lol dude you must be a very slow learner. it has to work. it HAS to. If it doesn't work for you please uninstall cat 5.0 that you just installed and install 6.3 instead. Then install chuck. Then force aa through control panel -- HOWEVER, it doesn't work with 6x AA! Only 2x and 4x work.Enable advanced catalyst AI.Start up oblivion launcher. Enable HDR. It will say that HDR and AA are not compatible -- ignore. On the option there leave AA off and HDR on.

Play the game. the only limitation is because of the way they implemented HDR, AA will not be available during tab menu.

Slow learner? Are you some sort of moron? I know more about games and graphics cards than you ever will. The basic fact is that it will not work on my machine. I am not the only person having this problem, but nobody knows why it is not working for some people but works fine for others.

And where on earth did you get CAT5.0 from??

"It HAS to work it HAS to" Where the fxxx are you from?? Disneyland??!! How can you say it HAS to work. Do you know anything at all about system variables?? I just need to have one corrupt file or setting somewhere that I don't know about (and probably have!!) and it could screw up something, in this case HDR+AA.

Ok.. here's a question... is it actually possible with a good opteron and a x1900xt to run HDR and AA at the same time. Oh an by the way i know what HDR is but what are AA and AF. They obviously optimize graphics at the cost of performance. And why do you need these and HDR. I am thinking of buying an x1900xt system and just want to know what it is capable of.

At this point if you haven't figured out how to get it to work on your setup, the problem is pointing away from the hardware/software and more towards the user. It works, but YOU have to find out why it doesn work on YOUR rig.

A 2ghz or faster Opteron with a 1900XT will definately run HDR+AA, there are people running it fine with 1800XT and the 1900XT has a fair bit more umph as far as Oblivion is concerned. You should be able to run fairly comfortably at 1280x1024.

Also, use this tweaking guide to get the most out of your card, especially make use of the "grass" tweak (page 10)

Yeah had a long session on rage3d last night, found a few more people having same prob but nobody as yet can work out what is causing the issue. A cuople of guys have done windows relaods and that fixed it, so it seems to be a variable in XP itself, but as to what that is, nobody knows.

BTW, it can't be user error when it is an executable patch, you should know that. It CAN be an error with my system and looks like it is, something somewhere is corrupt and as you know, needle in haystack to find that.

I've done a total clean of all ATI files using tweakguides ATI guide which is very comprehensive, and that didnt fix it, so I am fairly certain it is windows now.

My x1800xt handles 4AA+HDR with everything at max except self/soft shaddows (I didn't try with these on) at 12x10 acceptably (with an occasional slowdown). It does better at slighly lower res. Doesn't look much different IMO with the AA on.

AA - Anti Antialising - makes edges of shapes sharper (removes jaggies) so that it appears to be smooth.

AF - Anisotropic Filtering - Enhances textures, especially when they fade into distance o that it still has enough definition.

Both are pretty nice features that can make a good looking game even more great.

AA on 1024x768 doesn't work too much magic, so many opt for 1280x1024 and above with 2x/4x AA - the increased resolution plus the minor AA gives good results and acceptable performance. HDR + AA is also nice to have, as you only require a little AA along with HDr in 12x10 and still get nice performance - I'm refering to the 1900/1800 range of gcards.

None that I know of - we all use Cat 6.3 plus ChuckPatch... I guess that's why they released the hotfix, recon they had seperate teams working on CAT 6.4 and Hdr issue. Plus I think ATi wants to optimize the driver fully along with an Oblivion Patch. Rather take longer and do it properly, than haste and a bolls up.

You can also use the chuck patch with 6.4. CAT6.4 has fixed the Crossfire issue with Oblivion but does not support HDR+AA without the patch.

Oh another thing, I FIXED IT!!!!

The anomally causing the problem was a string from ATI Tool which had remained from an earlier install of an Omega Driver coupled with ATI Tool. The was disabling the Force AA Rendition in the background so the CAT AI was innefective so couldn't drive AA in Oblivion.

Only took about 15 hours to work that one out. Found a cuople of guys who had the same prob had also used an Omega driver recently (nothing wrong with Omega Drivers, they are brilliant, just dont have support for overclocking X1900 cards yet via ATI Tool) so we put our heads together and whittled it down. Was definately a pure fluke job.

The new ATI Tray Tools from Guru3d is also out, and works brilliantly with my 1900 card. Before, none of the ATT wanted to recognise my card.

Had the same problem with my laptop, and since I was unable to get the laptop drivers withiout the CCC I didn't care, but since the 6.4 version is CP instead of CCC I'm going to see if this version of AtiTrayTools crashes my laptop like the last one did (in the 5.10/5.11 era).

It would seem that you are the idiot. Can you not read or follow a thread correctly. I was the one with the problem, he was the one talking rubbish and I pointed it out. You just flamed me and for that and for your second response I will now state to you that you are quite clearly out of your depth when it comes to using such complex art forms simple communication with other people and should refrain from it in future until you have aquired a level of education that will allow you to observe such simple daily tasks as reading something, understanding something and actually being able to correctly respond to something. Until you reach that level of basic communication skill I suggest that you shut up and stop reading things on this forum that are obviously way too advanced for you to comprehend.

If you think that this sounds a bit harsh then I suggest that you start at the top of page 1 and read each post in sequence. This is a simple technique for not making a fool of yourself. By doing this you will see what the problem was, how the posts panned out, the correct reason for my earlier statement to which you stupidly replied and then you will see the subsequent expansion of your error with your last reply.

If you want I can re-write this for you using words with fewer letters that you might find easier to understand.

For those of you who think my response is OTT, please read my posts and this guys replies and judge for yourself. I don't like people who post rubbish on forums, and to post it at me is not on.

I must have responded to the wrong person, and you go on a different tangent about it. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, but that doesn't mean you have to be an ass. I’ve got a new idea, next time be a bit more considerate before attacking someone; you said I “flamed” you, when you’re the one insulting me. It was nothing more than a misunderstanding, but I suppose you have to defend your "online rep" or whatever you like to call it.

The only reason I originally quoted him had to do with someone having a problem, and I noticed his post with no positive input. Had I known he was the one with the initial problem, I wouldn't have bothered.

is that the best apology you got, no mention how you should have read all the posts before commenting, nothing 8O

Maybe you have some reading problems too.

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Had I known he was the one with the initial problem, I wouldn't have bothered.

If that's not good enough, I'll be the bigger man and say it; I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, and I hope you're able to get HDR+AA working on Oblivion. It's a shame to see good hardware go to waste thanks to a greedy game company's loyalty to another GPU manufacturer. :?